


These Questions That Chase Me

by woodentarantula



Category: Vocaloid
Genre: F/F, Modern Setting, [netflix voice] contains language and fear, also can this be called hurt/comfort if its near impossible to be comforting, also forgive me its been literal years since i've written these girls, can anything really be called an au here, neither are singers in this one if that's au material, perhaps
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-07
Updated: 2020-07-07
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:54:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25128847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/woodentarantula/pseuds/woodentarantula
Summary: The questions that chase her, hold her down, as she runs for cover she can never quite grasp. Kindness, sweetness hurts, shock like ice on a burn.
Relationships: Hatsune Miku/Megurine Luka
Kudos: 10





	These Questions That Chase Me

**Author's Note:**

> thanks always to [yosgay](https://archiveofourown.org/users/yosgay/pseuds/yosgay) for the beta~ you're a dear for reading my psychotic ramblings

She’s been finding this seedy bar really comforting recently. It’s tucked at the end of an alley and half-way underground and it collects the most interesting people. This pocket of Tokyo tends to find a fair amount of people from both high end jobs and minor celebrities, not unlike herself. She has her long, teal hair in a ponytail, pulled through the back loop of a ball cap to try and keep her face a bit hidden. It’s not every day she gets recognized, no. It’s more like once a month but it doesn’t stop it from being embarrassing.

It’s in this bar that she sees her- tall, holding herself high and in a smart suit with this light pinstripe and, miracle of miracles, she sits down next to her. Long, pale pink hair hangs loose around her shoulders, shifting freely as she raises a hand and orders her drink.

“Hi,” she says, forcing her new companion to look at her head on. “Been a good week for you?”

  
God, she looks like a business executive, with her well-fit suit. It’s not even that flat black that’s so popular with office workers these days, but has a slight red tint to it, the pinstripes a warm white. “As good as you can hope.” She replies, sucking on her long island as if it proves her point. And it kinda does. “And you?”

  
“Oh, not too bad.” She smiles at the bartender when she’s handed her rum and coke. A pretty pair they make. She rests her elbows on the bar counter in a way that's almost prim. “What’re you doing here? You’re too young to be drinking your life away.”

  
She scoffs, tugs at the hem of her skirt to occupy her hands. “I guess that’s fair. I’d argue college is a great reason to drink away but, yeah, I can’t have troubles at 22.”

  
“Oh, that’s not what I meant.” The woman has such a sweet smile, and her voice is deep and lilting, it’s hard to stay mad at her. She gestures out to the room with a waving hand. “Everyone here? We’re losers. I know that sounds harsh but I think it’s true. We’re all missing something, I think, and trying to find it at the bottom of these glasses.”

  
“Have you found it yet?”

  
“I don’t think ‘it’ exists.” She smiles again, small but radiant. “Oh sorry, you said you’re in college, what’re you studying?”

  
“Photography.” She grips her glass, takes another deep sip and lets the alcohol seep into her blood and ease her anxieties. Just a casual conversation at a bar, this should be just fine. “Well, 2 dimension design with a focus on photography, ya’know.”

  
“Oh wow,” Is her reply. “An art kid.” The younger grimaces a little but then laughs just a moment. “I’m in college too believe it or not. Graduate student.”

  
“Oh?” She downs the last of her drink in a gulp, pretending she gives a shit about this girl’s studies besides what could get her into her bed. The woman has her tie loose around her neck, barely tied at all and the top few buttons on her shirt undone, showing off the lacy edges of her bra when she leans over her drink.

  
“Yeah, philosophy.”

  
“Philosophy? The fuck you gonna do with that?” Ah, good ol’ alcohol, making her a bitch again. She tucks some hair back under her hat when it slips out with her incredulous movement.

  
The taller takes it in stride, shrugging with another wry smile. “I don’t know, really. I guess we’ll see.” And her face flickers like she’s remembered she’s left the gas on. “Oh, I’m Megurine, Luka really. Call me Luka.” She's stumbling with words and it both sets the other’s mind at ease and lights a fire under her stomach.

  
“Miku.” She replies. “Hey, wanna get out of here?”

  
Luka had denied her request that night. But that didn’t stop Miku from coming back to the bar every weekend, particularly Saturday nights like the one they had first met on. It’s only the third time they meet, each time divulging more and more of their personal lives, that she agrees to walk home with her.

  
Those talks at the bar were something that Miku looked forward to on her weekends and made it clear to Luka after a night of open mouth kisses and heavy breathing that they would be seeing more of each other. And when Luka had disappeared with the light of the moon, there on the dresser was her number.

  
And see more of each other they did. Luka opened Miku up, pulling her insides out with no cruelty or malice like a sweet knife. Miku would talk about her modeling gig- just a small girls’ fashion magazine but she’d already had a few full page spreads with less than a year with the company. That, and having a short, easy to remember name garnered her a surprising amount of popularity.

  
“I hope I don’t have to be fighting off any rabid fans.” Luka teased one night, her signature rum and coke in hand and her voice soft and low.

  
Luka talked about her work too, though rarely. “Data entry for an insurance company, boring stuff.” Really it was just a means to put her through graduate school, money for rent and coffee for long nights writing theoretical papers on ethics. Sometimes Miku could convince her to go on rants about specific philosophers, Simone de Beauvoir, Soseki, and Lao Tzu making for some of her favourite topics.

  
“Who are we, you know?” She questions, more than buzzed and body pressed close to Miku. “Are we born who we are or are we an amalgam of all that we’ve experienced? Can we be anything more than what we are destined from birth?” That night Luka had grabbed tight to her wrist, maybe hoping to leave a mark but there’s never a bruise. “I think so. I hope so.”

  
The two made quite a pair at the bar, dark pant suit next to a pastel skirt, but they thoroughly enjoyed themselves. When Luka suggested they meet up some other time besides pitch dark in an alley or in the early morning with both of them sprawled on one bed, Miku can’t help but agree emphatically. And when Luka shows up in a sweet floral print skirt and a frilled blouse, she’s never been so glad.

  
Neither of them have many free days, both sacrificing their weekend for the other almost every time. Frequently one will admit that they’re just too tired to go out that week and so they don’t, instead lazing around the house. Luka might do laundry or read while Miku kicks her feet up, more often than not using Luka’s lap as a footrest (lovingly, always lovingly) while she plays video games or paws through an artbook. It’s one of these days where Luka’s folding socks and Miku’s half upside down on the couch that she asks “Did you ever find it?”

  
“Find what?” Luka replies.

  
“That thing you said everyone was looking for at the bar.”

  
“Mmm…” She hums. “Maybe, I guess I won’t know for a while yet.” She takes the chance to grab one of Miku’s toes and tickles the bottom of her foot, making her squeal and pull away laughing. She rises up to rest her head on Luka’s back, breathing in her softly floral scent. Rose and ginseng.

  
“You know, one of the girls at the agency told me the strangest thing. It makes me wonder how many of us are really all just doing the same thing and if any of us are going to get anywhere.”

  
“What did she say?”

  
“Well, she was posing, you know, and the director seemed really frustrated and called for someone to take her ‘back to makeup’ but you know the girls are asked to do their own makeup before they even show up?” Luka nodded. She knew full well the money that Miku had to spend on products, money she got from modeling that fed right back into it. “Well, I went with her to help her out and she had these massive bags under her eyes, real dark they were showing right through her foundation. I let her use some of my cover-up since she didn’t have any. She’s way younger, like 14 I think, so she doesn’t have to cover up zits or anything like that.” Luka nodded again, quietly encouraging. “Well she tells me that she’s had a lot going on at cram school getting ready for high school entrance exams. I say geez Rin-chan- oh, her name’s Rin-chan- I say geez Rin-chan, you’re at school, cram-school, and you’re working a job? Why on earth are you putting yourself through so much? She says she has a brother and they’re both in school and their parents never planned on having the means for two kids- had only ever planned on one. I said well they’re still your parents they should be supporting you and not put so much on your shoulders. She said she knows but she still thinks it’s her duty to pay for school. Middle-school, Luka! At fourteen! That’s just so crazy.”

  
“I can understand where she gets that idea, though” Luka replies. “A lot of countries still don’t bother putting girls through school at all because it costs so much.”

  
“I know,” Miku concedes, looping arms around Luka’s front and resting hands in the curve of her hip. “But you don’t think about that sort of thing happening here. She said her brother’s her twin, and that no amount of planning could have really prepared her parents for twins. Actually, they were supposed to be triplets, but their third sibling was stillborn. She says wants to prove to that little baby that her life is worth living, even if they couldn’t.”

  
Luka rests a hand on Miku’s reassuringly. “Ah, I see. I can’t imagine having to prove my existence at such a young age.”

  
“Yeah…” Miku agrees, squeezing just a little bit tighter. Luka’s voice is smooth but it rumbles in her throat and Miku can feel it, feel it through her back and into her own chest like they breathe together. “I think I love you.” She says into the pink skin at the nape of Luka’s neck. Muffled, she hopes maybe the clattering of the words won’t shake her world apart.

  
Luka turns around slowly, laundry forgotten when she slides Miku onto her lap. Luka takes Miku’s face in her hands, eyes roaming over eyes, mouth, ears, chin. “I think I love you, too.” And she places a soft, chaste kiss on her mouth.

  
“I wonder if Rin-chan has someone to love her.”

  
Luka smiles and on anyone else it might have felt belittling, but it has such a warmth to it that it doesn’t. “I think so. She has her brother and she has friends at work like you.”

  
“I wouldn’t say we’re friends.” Miku says, burying her face back in Luka’s neck. “I should, huh. Maybe I can hang out with her some time after work, or even just get her cell number and we can chat. It feels so weird to try being friends with someone so young.”

  
“I think she’d like that. And I know it can feel a little weird but I bet she wouldn’t think anything of it, probably consider it more like a mentorship. A cool, pretty sempai like you to guide her through life.” Luka pinches Miku’s nose at her teasing and easy laughter spills between them.

  
When the laughter has died and Luka's returned to her folding, Miku cuts through the quiet once more. "What if one day, I fall in love with someone else?"

  
“I’m sure you will.” No malice, no regret, just factual as she says it to her own hands, to her socks.

  
“Why do you say that?” Miku doesn’t elaborate on her question, terrified to even suggest a future for the two of them, even if it is hypothetical. They met in a bar less than six months ago, how can you make any suggestion that this relationship is built to last?

  
“We’re young,” Luka answers. “You’re a person full of love and care and I’m sure many people are going to fall for you. I don’t see why you would turn down every one of them.”

  
“But how can you say something like that?”

  
Luka looks up, eyes finding nothing in the physical world but searching, thinking. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to make plans. I find they don’t normally go the way you hope.”

  
“But isn’t that what’s making Rin-chan do all this back breaking work? Just so she can go to school?”

  
“You said so yourself,” Luka smiles, not like she’s won an argument but like she's enjoying herself having one. Damn philosophers. “No amount of planning can really prepare a family for twins or especially triplets.”

  
That gets Miku quiet for a moment. She thinks a long while, turning over ideas in her head before she settles on saying her thoughts out loud. “Do you think Rin-chan’s parents were happy to see that they didn’t have triplets? That one of the babies had died?”

  
“That’s a hard thing to think, huh.” Luka says, reaching again to hold Miku in her arms, only finding an ankle within reach and resting a hand there. “It’s possible. I think you can be relieved and sad at the same time. If they were people who tried to prepare, they had probably been thinking about the cost of three children at once, especially for new parents. I can understand being relieved it was only two. But I can also imagine her mother being devastated.”

  
Miku watches distantly at the same nothing Luka looked at while she was thinking. The other world that constitutes what our eyes see when we aren’t looking. Fuzzy and distant. She doesn’t really want to be thinking any more and instead slides back to right beside Luka, taking a soft cotton shirt in hand and folding it, setting it beside all the others that rest on the table. “Why does it cost so much money to live, you think?”

  
“I don’t know.” Luka intones, a sad look flickering across her face where she doesn’t often let it. “I often wonder why it costs so much to learn. I don’t much care for it.”

  
Miku scoffs, but can’t help a fond smile creeping up her lips. Understatement of the century, but that’s how Luka can be, all middle ground and leniency, never so many harsh words that Miku wants to bark sometimes. She wants to tell Rin-chan’s parents to get better jobs, tell her brother to grow up and realize how much work his sister’s doing, scream at every politician that lets school cost so much money that a 14 year old has bags under her eyes.

  
And yet, all these socks and shirts need to be folded. They’re going to be arranged neatly in Luka’s pretty wooden bureau with the rose-printed paper on the inside. They’ll all be slid in so a bit of them sticks out, so they can all be seen at a glance so none of them get left behind or forgotten. Dinners will be cooked, dishes will be washed, laundry will continue to be folded while everyone scurries like ants, desperately trying to make ends meet.

  
Half-folded shirt in hand, another question. “Do you think everything can work out?” The shirt is gripped, scrunched up and small. “Can there be peace when there’s always something?”

  
“I don’t know.” Luka replies, a gentle hand on Miku’s, on the shirt. “There will always be more to worry about. I think,” and she trails off a moment, finding the nothing in the air, the dust motes whispering her thoughts back to her. “I think each person finds their own happiness, slowly sometimes and you have to fight for it, but I think it can be found.” And she smiles, her warm, smooth, loving smile.


End file.
